History & local legend
On July 23, 1892, Alexander Berkman entered Henry Clay Frick’s office in Pittsburgh’s Chronicle-Telegraph building and attacked him during the Homestead labor conflict. Frick survived gunshot and knife wounds, with fellow executive John Leishman helping him resist the attacker.
The ghost story associated with the attack concerns Frick’s daughter Martha, who had died the previous summer at six years old. According to the account published in Haunted Pittsburgh, Frick later said she appeared at his side when Berkman began firing. He wanted to embrace her and believed she had come to help him survive.
The book says he kept the experience private for years before discussing it. The appearance belongs to that later recollection of the attack, while the shooting itself took place in his downtown office, away from the family home at Clayton.
Sources
- Timothy Murray, Michelle Smith and Haydn Thomas, Haunted Pittsburgh, the published account of Martha’s appearance
- Arthur G. Burgoyne, Homestead (1893), executive John Leishman and the attack in the Chronicle-Telegraph building
- Paul and Karen Avrich, Sasha and Emma, locate the Chronicle-Telegraph building between Wood and Smithfield
- The Frick Collection, death dates and family history
